Manipulative high-frequency algorithmic trading is Wall Street's cash cow. This is how they steal with impunity to make statistically impossible profits every single day. Wall Street traders can't believe the public and the media aren't all over this. It is also why high-frequency trading accounts for 70% of market volume. Everything else is a sideshow. It is an understatement to say that manipulative high-frequency, algorithmic trading doesn't get the attention it deserves. Once the general public and investors become aware of this mega-scandal, which is right in front of their faces, there will be hell to pay.

Yes, the robo-trading is insanity incarnate. Why anyone would choose to invest in this rigged casino is beyond me. Invest in yourself and your family, invest in local organic food production, and local energy systems, and all the things you actually need to live. This action supports these local efforts to build systems that are not tied to the global-corporate-military-fascism that Wall St. feeds with your savings.

Unfortunately, most people just don't want to know. They just want to hand off some savings to a guy in a suit who tells them he will "grow" their money. They do not want to have to worry about it. This is understandable, as people really do have better things to do with their time. And in fact we should not even have to invest savings, we do, in an often futile attempt to stay ahead of inflation, so the money still has some value when we retire and need to spend it. This is all due to the broken monetary system that seeds the bankers with the ability to create money from nothing, and to demand interest for doing so. We need an entirely new money system. Or none at all.

Max Keiser has it nailed, but nothing is being done about it because there are no cops on the beat. I believe once investors see the simple schemes that lie behind the algorithms and how easily they are being ripped off, they will be incensed and will demand that the traders be indicted and jailed. Market manipulation was outlawed by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Unfortunately, the SEC is in the tank for Wall Street, as everybody knows who is paying attention. It is insufficient to rail against Wall Street. You have to put heat on their regulatory enablers who are supposed to ensure a fair marketplace. Follow the money and you will find that the big money is being made at Wall Street trading desks by punks who have federal regulators in their hip pockets.

Or just take your ball and go home, don't invest in any of it! There are real people in your area working on great projects, find them and invest with people you can shake hands with. Not throwing your money into a pit of hell, is one way out.

Of course I agree that these parasitic banksters and traders, need to be held to account. You know, back in the day, they would hang particularly egregious criminals, often former dictators by their feet not their necks, so the locals could have some fun throwing rocks, and poking them with sticks, or there is always the gaddafi,. . there is no punishment too severe for those that ruin whole nations and attempt to enslave them with bull sht debt forever. Bankers created the debt, they shall eat it.

If you pick up your marbles and go elsewhere, that's fine. Almost all Americans want the bankers and their government flunkies held to account because of the havoc they created on Main Street. Why should bankers get to steal from honest people and have the government protect them? That's not America. It's some cesspool that has overflowed and seeped into our marketplace and from there into our homes.

Is Britain taking the MP's statement seriously? I haven't heard or read anything about this here in U.S? As wild as this is, I would not put anything pass the Fed. After all, the Fed operates like a star chamber, fourth plutocratic branch of government? What say you?

The quantitative traders, or quants as they are called, employ physicists and engineers to design fairly sophisticated algorithms that use probability theory to quickly take advantage of disparities or imbalances in the market.

The manipulators, on the other hand, use straightforward algorithms, which are no more than simple software routines, to do their thing. No physicists or engineers with advanced degrees are necessary to design high-frequency manipulation computer code to perform such scams as the wave or flash high-frequency trades. It's more important for firms, which use high frequency trading to manipulate the market, to buy protection so regulators look the other way. That is why Wall Street bankers are always the biggest contributors to the campaigns of either political party. Once the cops stand down, the rest is so easy a drunk is his most inebriated state can do it. The only problem, at that point, is to make the profits not appear too obscene. This could bring heat from pain-in-the-ass media, although they have been largely missing in action due to ignorance or neglect. After all, most people's eyes glaze over when they hear the word "algorithm". That lack of attention is a gift to Wall Street bankers.